The reductionist anthropology and
human safety : the study of Parfit’s
concept of survival
Security Dimensions. International & National Studies nr 1 (13), 95-105
t
He reduCtionist antHroPology and Human safety.
t
He study ofP
arfit’
s ConCePt of survivalDrhab. teresa grabińska, Prof. naDzw. wsowl
Military Academy of Land Forces, Wrocław, POLAND
ABSTRACT in the face of the ideology and the practice of transhumanism and of dynamically developing technologies of genetics, robotics, information science and the nanotechnology the essential changes of the condition of the individual and social life are becoming more and more real. Most general visualising these progressive changes and threats they are carrying which, was conducted as part of the so-called constitutive reductionism by Derek Parfit. in the article there is discussing Parfit’s analyses in the context of bioethics problems. ARTICLE INFO Article history received: 26.04.2015 accepted: 05.05.2015 Keywords bioethics, constitutive reductionism, personal identity, safety of survival SECURITY DIMENSIONS
intErnationaL & nationaL studiEs
NO. 13; 2015 (95–105)
inTROduCTiOn
let me introduce briefly main theses of Derek Parfit’s1 concept of personal identity. i will deal
with the concept not because it is inventive or particularly valuable from a cognitive point of view. i will deal with the concept, as it has been discussed and is a contemporary follow up of psychological and subjectivist concept of a human being in the british thought developed since the 16th/17th century. Other reason of my 1 More on this subject: T. grabińska, Abortion nd Euthanasia
in Constitutive Reductionism of Derek
Parfit, “życie i Plod-ność 2”, 2010, p. 7-13 – the content of this paper is involved in our considerations; T. grabińska, Ł. suliga, The
Enslave-ment with Temporary Character in the Derek Parfit’s Per-sonal Identity
Concept, „Wolność osoby – Wolność obywa-tela”, cz. 2, Disputationes Ethicae V, Częstochowa 2010, p. 21-47., and in Parfit’s papers, D. Parfit, Personal Identity,
The Philosophical review 80 (1), (1971); Derek Parfit, Rea-sons and PerThe Philosophical review 80 (1), (1971); Derek Parfit, Rea-sons, Oxford 1984.
considerations is contemporary development of transhumanism2 and griN technology3 aimed
on the fulfillng the Parfit’s thought experiments with surviving the person.
the current discussions on bioethical issues such as inadmissibility or admissibility of trans-plantation, abortion, euthanasia, cloning or in vitro fertilization show the presence of argu-ments for the measures, which, although it is generally referred to in mass media and often serving propaganda purposes, has its roots in concept of a human being similar to Parfit’s proposal. it is worth noting that a final compar-
ison of different philosophies of the human be-2 M. More, N. Vita-More, The Transhumanist Reader:
Classi-cal and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, New York 2013.
3 griN technology is the connecting of new technologies of genetics (g), robotics (r), informational technology (i), na-notechnology (N).
ing – subjectivist and reductionist philosophies (such as Parfit’s philosophy) with those, which originate from aristotelian and Thomistic stem (as in the Christian personalism), makes it pos-sible to reach sources of views and understand difficulties, which are generally impossible to overcome in a possible program of overcoming of differences.
lOCke’s PsyChOlOgisTiC AnThROPOlOgy
John locke4 adopted a psychological criterion
of personal identity, according to which a giv-en person’s identification with oneself is de-termined by so-called realised memory, which means that identification with oneself is deter- mined by memories, which are referred to con-tinuously. in accordance with the criterion for identity of a given person it would be most im-portant to preserve continuity of memories in his/her entire biological life. Derek Parfit5
re-vised the so-called natural view of personal identity. To this end Parfit used thought exper-iments involving transplantation of respective brain hemispheres to different bodies and com-bining various brains (various consciousness- es) in one body and other experiments. as a re-sult of similar experiments and more detailed so-called spectres, in which even more organs (physical spectre), even more consciousness-es (psychical spectre) and, in total, even more organs and consciousnesses (combined spec-trum) are transplanted to a human being, Parfit came to a conclusion that personal identity may also be unspecified6 and that one had better
re-fer to survival of a person.
in the light of Parfit’s thought experiments and his clinging to the criterion of locke’s per-sonal identity it could, for example, be that one
person will appear as two persons, as two bod-4 J. locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in-dianapolis 1996, and also: D. hume, A Treatise of Human
Nature, sioux Falls (sD) 2007. 5 D. Parfit, Personal… 6 D. Parfit, Reasons…, s. 261. ily individuals with their consciousnesses trans- planted could have the same course of memo- ries (memory). Thus, Parfit came to a conclu-sion that locke’s criterion is inadequate, all the more it had been criticised much earlier (in the 17th century) by Thomas reid7 for its lack of
non-transitivity. (if a middle-aged person iden-tified with a person in childhood due to some memory W, and the same elderly person iden-tifies with the middle-aged person, then, de-spite the fact that the person no longer has any memories in her/his memory W, is the elder- ly person the same person from his/her child-hood?). Moreover, the very memory tends to efface memories.
Parfit proposed a criterion of survival of a per-son based upon his relation r. similar to locke’s criterion, this criterion has a psycholog-ical nature, but it is more general, as relation r means causal connection and/or psychical con-nections8. Psychical states are not only limited to memories, but also include likes, intentions and so-called quasi-psychical states. For Parfit, survival of a person does not require preserva-tion of all memories, but a merely continuous transformation of memories and other psychi- cal states in time (this way Parfit removed re-id’s charge of non-transitivity). Thus, connection of psychical states will be sufficient and not the necessary simple continuity. it would only be amnesia that could exclude occurrence of rela-tion r, i.e. it would exclude survival of a person.
PARfiT’s ReduCTiOnisM
locke distinguished between a person and a human individual. The same biological hu-man being (individual) does not always have to be the same person. Parfit combined per-sonal identity (in the sense of survival) with a brain, which was not necessarily treated as the same biological organ. The brain identity (in the sense of survival) and, at the same time,
7 T. reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Edin-burgh 2002.
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identity of a person (in the sense of survival)may also be ensured in an unnatural manner, for example, as a result of copying of mental paths or artificial reconstruction of the brain. Parfit even admitted a supernatural reason for preservation of personal identity (survival) – as a result of resurrection9.
Parfit’s concept of a person in his reduction-ism (referred to as constitutive reductionism) limits (reduces) a person to selected attributes (here: psychological and psychical, conscious and mental), which are manifested externally in phenomenal reality (phenomenon). Thus, it is a reductionist and phenomenalistic concept of a person. i have pointed out an important par-adox about the type of concept – let me refer to it as a paradox of subjectivity and objectivity (s/O)10. a particular person is to prove outside – to others with its deepest subjective feeling that he/she is that or other person and that he/ she knows or does not know that he/she is that or other person. The paradox made itself felt at once, when Parfit established that, finally, there was no need to ascertain existence of a person with that or other identity, however, it is enough to verify facts of manifestations of a person em-pirically (by the person’s acts)11 in a sense of making it objective. however, Parfit did not limit (reduce) a per-son to his/her brain. it is understandable in case of his concept, as the brain, in a biological sense, may be subject to various deformations and, thus, it cannot always represent a person. Thus, we still need this external objectivisation, which is manifested in states of corporeality in external phenomenal reality (thus we have con-stitutive reductionism). let us add that due to s/O paradox the price is a characteristic blur-ring of autonomous character of a person.
9 D. Parfit, On the Importance of Self-Identiy, “The Journal of Philosophy”, 68 (20) (1971), p. 689. in transhuamanist vision the resurrection is to be planned in posthuman world. 10 T. grabińska, Abortion... .
11 D. Parfit, Reasons…, p. 210.
Parfit did not deem it proper to express judge-ments about existence of particular persons. This way, he avoided deciding on a number of persons in his thought experiments of connect-ing (merging) of several persons into one or constructing replicas. it is not existence of par-ticular persons (as the same or not the same as those before the experiment), but psychical connection and its external representation in body responses that matters: although a per-son differs from his/her body and each series of thoughts and experiences, the person’s being includes only those elements and constitutes of such elements12 . Persons may exist connect-ed with one another (not only as autonomous being), as the very sense of existence is under-stood by Parfit as fulfilment of relation r and this condition only13.
a person in Parfit’s constitutive reduction-ism is determined by relation r.14 according
to Parfit, this relation may also be preserved, when there is no direct connection of psychical states, but it may be preserved in a weakened sense: when there is a connection of Parfit’s so- called quasi-psychical states, i.e. quasi-memo-ries, quasi-intentions, quasi-likes, quasi-intents etc. Quasi prefix indicates here other than natu- ral causes of psychical states, for example, re- incarnation, transplantation of copying of mem-ory paths.
relation r, which guarantees survival of a person, may be preserved unnaturally, which is connected with the possibility of so-called manifold. it may be that more than one per- son will prove the same psychical and psycho- logical structure and it may happen that accu-rate corporal and psychic replicas may appear, which are parallel to the original and have their origins in other place and time than the origi- nal. When asked about, whether such a repli-
ca will be the same given person, Parfit provid-12 D. Parfit, The Unimportance of Identity, [in:] h. harris,
Identity, Oxford 1995, p. 13-45.
13 D. Parfit, iReasons…, p. 340-341. 14 Ibid..., p. 262.
ed a complex response: a future person will be me, if he/she is me in relation r, just as i am now, however, when no other person is me in relation r . Thus, those would not be the same persons, but, as Parfit stated, persons connect-ed closely with a given person and a replica will be a continuation of a given person and not the same person. however, when the original dis- appears, splitting will also disappear and a rep-lica will become the same as the original. Thus, a replica guarantees survival of the original and it does not determine personal identity between a replica and original.
The iMPORTAnCe Of AnThROPOlOgiC AssuMPTiOns fOR BiOeThiCs
since the other half of the 20th century the con-cept of a person formulated by Derek Parfit has been widely discussed.15 in the subject
litera-ture the concept is criticised from numerous points of view16. The criticism includes issues,
which relate directly to an analysis of bioethical problems such as transplantations, abortion, euthanasia or cloning. similar to a much more earlier John locke’s17 concept of a person in british circles, Parfit’s concept of a person as-sumes reduction of a person to his/her mental and psychical sphere. Parfit discusses locke’s criterion of personal identity reduced to conti-nuity of memory in his thought experiments and deliberates over survival of a person in case of transfer of memory contents from one body to
15 s. schneider, Science Fiction and Philosophy. From Time
Travel to Superintelligence, New York 2010.
16 Parfit’s works are criticised from three points of view. The criticism involves: 1) methodology of thought experiments and method of justification of theses with the use of the same, e.g. kathleen V. Wilkes, Real People: Personal
Identity without Thought
Experiments, Oxford 1988; 2) co- herence of the concept of a person in constitutive reduc-tionism, e.g. harold W. Noonan, Personal Identity, rout- ledge, london 1989; 3) practical and ethical consequenc-es of reductionism, e.g. robert M. adams, Should Ethics Be More Impersonal in: J. Dancy (ed), ,,reading Parfit”, Oxford 1997, p. 265, and criticism from the point of view of personalism. 17 J. locke, An Essay... . another or, as he mentions, transfer of a brain directly. regardless of, whether such thouhght experiments are real, the problem of identity, or, as Parfit postulates, the problem of surviv-al of a person becomes important in the light of new medical techniques of transplantation18
and cloning.
Ethical problems of abortion, euthanasia, cloning or transplantation are resolved in a dif-ferent manner in philosophical anthropology, which assumes psychical and physical unity of a person just as, for example, aristotelian and Thomistic unity and such problems are resolved in a different way in anthropologies, which reduce a person to his/her states of con-sciousness – such as, for example, locke’s anthropology and partly Parfit’s anthropology and it is different in materialistic and mechanis-tic anthropologies. The discussion of bioethical problems in the light of Parfit’s concept shows again that res-olutions depend on an anthropology adopted. Thus, we deal with a problem of grounds of bio- ethics. Different anthropologies will lay founda-tions for different kinds of ethics, under which the same problems will be evaluated and val-ued in a different way. Even if, as in modern philosophy, one departs from systemic formula-tion of philosophy and emphasizing of grounds of deliberations concerning a human being in the human ontology, the problem of identity of a person still appear in theoretical deliberations and in practice of detailed sciences, including mainly psychology and biomedical sciences. in locke’s anthropology, which has an enor-mous impact upon the human philosophy in british circles, a person is not merely a bio- logical being (individual), but a person is lim- ited (reduced) to a continuous stream of con-sciousness, i.e. to so-called realised memo- ry. a person is himself/herself (the same per- son) as long as memory preserves its conti-nuity. This psychological criterion of identity
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of a person (self-identification) has been criti-cised from the beginning19. in spite of this and, to a considerable extent, due to subjectivistic features of the british phi-losophy, locke’s concept is still significant for the human philosophy and resolving of ethi- cal issues. Parfit refers to the concept (i.e. so-called natural view of personal identity), revises it and publishes his own version of reduction-ism. as a result of thought experiments, Parfit challenges adequacy of the term of ,,person-al identity”. The experiments lead to difficulties in determination of personal identity based on memory20 . Parfit considers so-called survival of a person involving psychical connection de- spite change of corporeality, as the most ade-quate representation of a person. Parfit thinks that a new criterion of self-iden-tification of a person makes it possible to avoid problems with establishment of identity. some critics are right in disagreeing with Parfit’s argu-ments for departure from the term of ,,personal identity”. however, let us look at Parfit’s con- cept and his thought experiments from the per-spective of resolution of bioethical problems. according to Parfit, survival is most important for being a person, including survival in a differ-ent body. a person’s survival does not require locke’s continuity of memories (as in the case of a supernatural situation – resurrection21) or it does not necessarily involve memories of ac- tually experienced events. a psychical connec-tion (by way of relation r introduced by Parfit) will do22. it will be enough to preservequa-
si-memories (generally – so-called quasi-psy- 19 The earliest criticism of locke’s concept includes: J. but-ler, Of Personal Identity, ,,Personal identity”, los angeles 1975, p. 99-105; T. reid, Of Identity and Of Mr. Locke’s
Ac-count of Our Personal Identity, ,,Personal...”, p. 107-118;
20 Parfit, Reasons…, p. 261.
21 Parfit, On the Importance..., p. 689. 22 Parfit, Reasons…, p. 262.
chical states) acquired from other person natu-rally or artificially (just as in the case of transfer of memory paths from the brain or other parts of the brain of one individual to another).
Parfit’s concept of a person is a reduction-ist one in a sense that it dreduction-istinguishes only be-tween certain features in a person and assigns a sort of ontic character to the features. thus, a person is reduced to a psychological, mental and consciousness sphere. Earlier, i indicated to so-called paradox of subjectivity and objec- tivity (s/O) in this and similar concepts of a per- son. On one hand, a person, in his/her (subjec- tive) deepest internal conviction has to identi-fy with himself/herself and on the other hand, the exterior (objective instance) is to evaluate, whether a given person is the one that is meant or not. Therefore, among others, Parfit re-signed from the term of ,,personal identity” and reduced an objective identification of a person to his/her manifestations, for example, through acts ascertained in the exterior23
. The psychi-cal connection represented outside in body responses is fundamental to survival (and not for existence, as Parfit emphasizes) of a per-son. in reductionism (constitutive reductionism) a person is constituted in his/her external form, which, in a way, verifies his/her identity at the price of his/her autonomous character. The ap-parent nature of such resolution of s/O paradox will appear further in the course of considera-tion of bioethical problems.
sORTs Of ARguMenTs fOR ResOlVing BiOeThiCAl PROBleMs
in justification of arguments for and against abortion, there are utilitarian and ideological ar-guments. Most important utilitarian arguments include the following connected arguments:
• economical (due to so-called costs of child raising), • social (due to a low status of multi-children families), • political (due to demographic advantage over poor and poor developed countries).
The following may be distinguished among ideological arguments:
• philosophical (due to the concept of a human being, philosophical anthropology),
• religious (due to supernatural sense of a hu-man being),
• feministic (due to so-called autonomous character of women’s decision on their own bodies).
Thus, the subject of further deliberations will include philosophical arguments. in the british philosophical tradition we may find lively reduc-tionist concepts of a human being most often reduced to a mechanism just as in Thomas hobbes24 or to a psychical sphere just as in locke or even to a bunch of impressions like in David hume concept. as i mentioned, Parfit is a follower of locke’s thought (and, to some ex-tent, hume’s concept), but i think that one may also find an implicit reference to hobbes’s im-age of a human being in Parfit’s constitution of a human being in the exterior, blurring of a bor- der between the interior and exterior and identi-fication of a person by external responses.
in Parfit’s concept, survival of a person in-volves existence of states or quasi-psychical states (instances of internal identification) and identification of manifestations of personality in the exterior. in this light, the earliest stages of human life, in his/her zygotic form, are not connected psychically with further states and are not manifested outside (e.g. in a mother’s sensations). according to Parfit, there is no psychological connection (no relation r) and,
24 T. hobbes, Leviathan, Cambridge 2006; T. grabińska,
Hobbe’s Desire of Power as an Essence of Understand-ing of Entrepreneurship and WorkUnderstand-ing Man,
„Młody człow-iek wobec pracy, wyzysku i bezrobocia”, kraków 2014, p. 65-86.
therefore, abortion is admissible in early stag-es of development of a foetus25 . thus, there is
still a problem of determination of a borderline between appearance of connection and degree of connection meeting requirements of rela-tion r until emergence of self-consciousness or a degree of self-consciousness. as supporters of views of abortion believe, the problem may be solved through development of biomedical research. however, the belief ends, where it should be determined, what a consciousness is. This problem may be resolved empirically only to some extent and, therefore, generally, it cannot be technically resolved.
To establish what a consciousness is, seems to go beyond the scope of biomedical scienc- es. What is more, even in philosophical delib-erations and attempts to capture the essence of consciousness conceptually, there are prob-lems, which can only be solved on the basis of a linguistic convention and not on the basis of the human ontology.
it is possible to justify, in a most coherent manner, a view of unity of a human being starting from the stage of an embryo in the realistic aristotelian and Thomistic ontology. in this concept a human being is a psychical and physical unity and his/her development is determined by potentialities, which are up-dated in time and subsequent stages. Thus, everything that will happen in the future indi-vidual development is, in a way, in a potential stage at the very beginning. adoption of delib-erate causation as a relation of connection re- moves the problem of establishment of a bor- der of beginning of consciousness, as psychi-city is always present in some form and, then, connected with physicality, it evolves into oth-er forms in an ontic connection. in the light of discussion between opponents and supporters of abortion it is worth recon-structing, on the basis of their arguments, an anthropological level, i.e. a level of
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tions (philosophical or theological andphilo- sophical) about a human being. as i have al-ready mentioned, in the british tradition, there is a lively concept of a human being reduced to psychical states, consciousnesses and wil-ful acts (e.g. wants directed by a mechanism of aversion and desires26). already mentioned
locke reduced personal identity to continuity of memories in a conscience of a given person. Despite s/O paradox, the state of such realised memories would be verifiable in external ob-servations. if so – as supporters of the concept think – as it is not possible to ascertain, whether a zygote or early foetus is self-conscious, then it is unjustifiable to connect being of a zygote or early foetus with being of a person, who emerg- es from them. Thus, according to locke’s con- cept of personal identity, one would have to ex-amine stages of a zygote and foetus in order to capture the moment, when self-consciousness is created. according to Parfit, capturing of the moment of self-consciousness is decisive for the begin- ning of being a person, whereas a foetus be-comes a human being as of its birth. according to Parfit’s constitutive reductionism, relation r has different force depending on, how strong a given person feels his/her psychical bonds with his/her earlier stages. There is relation r or there is no relation r at all or the relation is very weak between further psychical and men-tal states and the state of a foetus. therefore, Parfit admits an early abortion and he is defi-nitely against an abortion before delivery. the decision of abortion in a mean time should de-pend on a degree27.
Parfit and representatives of similar concepts of a human being did not even think (due to limitations of the recognised philosophical
concept of a human being) that a human be-26 C.f. hobbes, Leviathan; k. Pierwoła, M. zabierowski,
The Freedom and Will in the Thomas Hobbes’ approach. A Critical Analysis, „Wolność osoby – Wolność obywate-la”, Disputationes Ethicae iV (2009), Częstochowa 2009, p. 29-51. 27 D. Parfit, Reasons…, p. 322. ing may be identified with all stages of his/her development in other than subjective and psy-chological manner. This is senseless for them. They are not able to imagine that opponents of abortion do not articulate a requirement of psy- chical connection with all developmental stag-es. Opponents of abortion and defenders of life base their arguments on quite a different an-thropology, i.e. personalistic anthropology and, if they refer to identification of a human being with all developmental stages, the identification is not of psychological or subjective character. the identification has its grounds in the aristo-telian and Thomistic ontology, which assumes that a human being is a physical and psychical unity and a dynamic being, which becomes up-dated in the process of development. Thus, at the very beginning, i.e. from the zygote, a hu- man being has all that will become updated lat-er. One has to refer to continuity here, however, this will be an ontic continuity. One may also re-fer to continuity in a theological sense, namely continuity of origin of creation from the Creator, which a creature cannot interfere with.
The euThAnAsiA PROBleM in PARfiT’s ReduCTiOnisM
The moment of a clinical death of a human be-ing is established on the basis of indications of medical equipment, which measures the lev-el of intensity of selected life processes. as of cessation of the processes, a human organism is pronounced dead. however, in some cas-es only some indicators reach the zero level, which means that an organism still lives, but is dependent (supported externally by medical equipment) or does not establish any contact with external environment (is in a coma, lethar- gy or dementia). in such cases additional pre-requisites are required (similar to the problem of abortion) in order to justify artificial cessation of life, i.e. euthanasia.
similar to deliberations on abortion, one could distinguish utilitarian and ideological
ar- guments in the dilemma of admissibility or in-admissibility of euthanasia:
• utilitarian arguments, including economi-cal arguments (due to technical costs of life sustaining referred to as artificial life sustain- ing, or costs of medical care of the ill per-son) social arguments (due to burdening of families with care of the ill person and fam-ily members, with whom no contact can be established); • ideological arguments, including philosophi-cal arguments (due to the human ontology) and religious arguments (due to the super-natural sense and eschatological horizon of human life).
similar to the case of abortion, in this scope of reductionist concepts of a human being (such as Parfit’s concept) we deal with a sim-ilar and irresolvable problem of euthanasia, which is connected with understanding of the essence of humanity. it is reduced to impres-sions or feeling of a psychical nature, then, due to difficulties in establishment of a border of self-consciousness, euthanasia may be treat- ed as a homicide or peculiar suicide, if we as- sume that a person, who is losing his/her con-sciousness, kills himself/herself or, finally, as a peculiarly technical act of removal of physi- cality, which, in those concepts, does not repre-sent the essence of a human life. On the other hand, when one ponders over requested eu-thanasia, i.e. making a deliberate decision on ending one’s own life and the life is to be end- ed in participation of third persons, then, as re-gards reduction of a person to consciousness, in reductionist concepts focused on the course of consciousness as a determinant of a person, requested euthanasia has characteristics of both a homicide and suicide.
in his concept of a person Parfit not only solves the problem of euthanasia, but he puts it aside, cancels and proposes a sort of per-spective of immortality involving replication of a person. For it is about survival (in the sense of relation r). the survival does not have to be
realised in the same body, i.e. the same physi-cality. Parfit’s thought experiment referred to as teleportation, which involves body reconstruc-tion (in a teleporter) and introducteleportation, which involves body reconstruc-tion of con-sciousness into the body, is to make it possible for a person to survive as a replica. it is worth mentioning again, what has already been written in other paragraph28 and makes it possible to, additionally, distinguish between the problem of abortion and euthanasia in re-ductionist concepts of a human being. it is a problem of objectivisation of a person (as part of s/O). in case of abortion, the beginning of consciousness from a biomedical point of view is searched for. in case of euthanasia, the end of consciousness is even more difficult to cap-ture and it is finally decided on arbitrarily or con-ventionally by others. its is even worse in case of requested euthanasia, when the course of consciousness is not broken and sick physical-ity request for killing of its own consciousness.
in Parfit’s concept of a person, the end of a person is not its definite end, as the person may survive, i.e. preserve his/her psycholog-ical connection in other body. Parfit designed (in a thought experiment) so-called teleporta-tion as a peculiar method of prolongation of life as a result of replication of a given person. an appropriate machine (a teleporter) would re-construct a body and transfer consciousness to the body. according to Parfit’s approach, phys-ical death does not have to mean the end of a person. a person may survive in other body or a replica of his/her body.
similar to the issue of ethical character of abortion, the issue of ethic character of eutha-nasia is possible to understand in the light of adopted philosophical or theological and philo- sophical assumptions. if relation r is to repre- sent identification of a person with himself/her-self, then, as a result of senile dementia, deep coma or other complaints, which extremely im- pair self-consciousness and psychical process-28 T. grabińska, Abortion...
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es, a given person is not able to survive and,thus, he/she, in a way, kills himself/herself. The meaning of physical life (body) is not funda- mental to being a person. Therefore, death in-flicted to the body from outside does not mean killing of the person, as the person did not ex-ist in the psychical and mental sense earlier. in Parfit’s opinion, one cannot, in case of eutha- nasia, perform moral evaluations, as such eval-uations relate to defence of life, i.e. survival of a person in Parfit’s sense, and not a material and biological corporeality. Parfit is not a mate-rialist, idealist or Thomist, but a psychological subjectivist and immaterialist.
similar to abortion, Parfit and followers of a similar philosophy of the human being are not able to capture the meaning of continuity of a human being, including material, substan- tial being other than psychological and subjec-tive. The paradox of s/O, which i have raised, is even more apparent in case of euthanasia than in case of abortion, as in case of abortion, supporters of reductionism attempt to see sci-entifically objectivised beginnings of self-con-sciousness and processes of transformation of psychical states. however, in case of euthana- sia, all they have to do is to finally make an ar-bitrary and external evaluation of the state of being or not being a person (in Parfit’s sense) by conventionally selected indicators and adju-dicating group.
Finally, it is worth quoting a true ascertain-ment made by Warren bourgeois, one of the contemporary disputers, including those of Parfit’s disputers – as a consequence of reduc- tionism, a person becomes ,,an ephemeral be-ing moving in and out of the body secretly“29.
The ,,BAld MAn” PARAdOx And PARfiT’s sPeCTRes
among his concepts referred to as thought ex-
periments and transplanting of one part of a hu-29 W. bourgeois, Persons: What Philosophers Say About
You, groton 1955, p. 393. man being to other human being, Parfit distin-guished between so-called spectra. a physical spectrum corresponds to a real transplantation. During the transplantation, parts of one human being are transplanted to another human be- ing. in a physical spectrum as a thought exper-iment, more and more consciousnesses and, in a combined spectrum, more and more bodily organs and consciousnesses are transplanted at the same time. The problem connected with identity of a person or Parfit’s survival of a per-son in other body involves understanding of transformation of one person into another. For Parfit it is a theoretical problem rooted in his concept of a person. it may be a real problem in case of transplantation of numerous organs of one person to another. it is certainly connect-ed with an eternal logical problem, but, as i am going to show, it is only partly connected with the problem. in logics, this problem is referred to as, for example, a paradox of a “bald man”. The ,,bald man” paradox is ascribed to Eubu-lides30. Due to semantic blurriness of the terms of ,,bald man” it cannot be defined equally. One cannot capture a quantitative border of not be-ing a bald man yet and being already a bald man. in case of Parfit’s spectres, the paradox would be as follows. No one can deny that, if an organ (not a brain) belonging to a person b is transplanted to a person a, this person is still himself/herself. if, however, another organ of the person b (not a brain) is transplanted to the operated person a, then, in accordance what we have recognised before, the person a is still himself/herself. Continuing the proce-dure, it would turn out that all organs (except for the brain) belonging to the person b could be transplanted to the person a and the person a would still become the same as it was before the experiment.
however, the issue of gradual transplanta- tions does not correspond to the gradual los-ing of hair in the paradox. Firstly, the reason for
30 Y. Dolev, Why Induction Is No Cure For Baldnes, Philo-sophical investigations 27 (4) (2004), p. 328–344.
that is because the paradox cannot be formu-lated only with exclusion of one of the organs – a brain. secondly, and this is connected with the first reservation, transplanted parts are not only calculable elements of the structure of the organism as it is in case of hair on the head. Transplanted parts of the organism, as ele-ments of the structure, have precisely defined functions in connection with other elements. The view of Parfit’s spectres in the perspective of ,,the bald man” paradox indicates again that a human organism is a unity of structure and function possible to capture in the concept of a human being as a psychical and physical uni-ty and organicist whole and not in reductionist and mechanistic concepts.
as regards Parfit’s approach, the most im- portant questions is: Where in particular spec-tres is there still a psychical connection, i.e. to which point can we consider that a given per-son will survive. it is worth quoting Tadeusz bilikiewicz’s thought experiment31. it involves
depriving of a given person subsequent body organs, one by one, and replacing the same with artificial organs (or transplanting of per-son b’s body parts to person a gradually). in the end, the brain would be left disconnected from sense receptors. bilikiewicz claimed that: • a person reduced to a brain would still pre-serve his/her personality, but he/she would not be able to show it outside,
• the person’s brain would not only contain memories, as it would operate on ,,a cur-rent basis” simulating existence of organs, which had been taken away, as similar to phantom symptoms.
acceptance of transplantation despite the fact that spectrum problems are irresolvable in relation to personal identity is justified on an utilitarian basis, on one hand (survival of hu-man life despite changed personality). On the other hand, it is justified ideologically due to,
for example, value of the gift of one’s own cor-31 M. Nowacka, The reduction of bodily sphere as a therapy
of future, archeus 2, 2001, p. 37-43.
poreality for improvement of health or saving the condition of other person. however, this does not mean that the reductionist concept of a human being will be accepted – it is even to the contrary.
The suRViVAl BeCAuse Of The BRAnChing Of PeRsOns
Parfit deliberates over the problem of so-called branching. it appears in the thought exper-iment, in which memory paths or the entire brain is transplanted from one body to another and, when Parfit’s teleporter makes a replica of a given person and memory carriers of that person are transferred to a new body and, at the same time, the person in its condition be-fore the experiment is left alive. Then, if one assumes a psychological criterion of person-al identity or survival, two individuals with the same or different bodies may be treated as the same person. it would be the same person in two copies. in this situation, due to unspecified character (blurring) of personal identity, Parfit resigns from the concept of personal identity and replaces it with the already mentioned sur-vival of a person (in other bodies).
The described branching of a person admits parallel existence of the person and its repli-cas. Parfit does not claim that a replica is the same person32, but that it is closely
connect-ed with a given person . in the light of Parfit’s thought experiments relating to branching, one may deliberate over the qualification of a cloned organism.
as far as cloning is concerned, it involves cre-ation of an organism, which is genetically the same as the parent organism. Thus, the prob-lem is, whether the genetic load, which car-ries well specified biological characteristics, includes inherited experience encodes in the consciousness of the parent organism. if this was the case, would the consciousness be re-vealed at the very beginning of life of a clone
SECURITY DIMENSIONS
13
or it would become gradually revealed in the course of individual development of the clone. in the first case, early stages of development of the clone would be marked by consciousness and, therefore, the situation would be different than that evaluated by reductionist of abortion – the clone could not be deprived of life in the earliest stages of its development. if this was the case, as in the other case, the clone would repeat the stages of inherited consciousness, however, its individual being would modify con-siderably the contents of the consciousness. The other case seems more real, especially due to inheritance of some mental and psy-chical dispositions than just consciousness. Cloning may, therefore, be treated as Parfit’s survival of one person in the other due to the above-mentioned close connection of the clone and parent organism. however, the clone is not the same as parent organism neither in the in-dividual nor personal sense. RefeRenCes1. adams r. M., Should Ethics Be More
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